There have in the past been provided a plurality of manual knife sharpening instruments that have achieved a considerable degree of commercial success and one such knife sharpening device includes a pair of crossed abrasive rods usually constructed of compressed ceramic or graphite powder, or in some cases serrated hardened steel. One of these is a table-mounted implement having a wooden base with a plurality of angularly related holes in the base that removably receive the abrasive rods. The base is rectangular and elongated and the user manually grasps one end of this base and forces it down against the supporting surface or table with the rods diverging generally vertically upwardly. This knife sharpening device has been found quite adequate, but it is not readily portable and in some positions of the device the user's supporting hand, i.e., the hand on the base, is somewhat close to the knife sharpening area subjecting it to some physical risk.
Another knife sharpening device that has found some success in the marketplace is a crossed abrasive rod sharpener having a short plastic handle. This device has also achieved considerable success in the marketplace and is reasonable safe but it does have the disadvantage that it cannot be supported on readily available supporting surfaces and it is also somewhat difficult to align with respect to the knife blade surfaces to be sharpened.
In U.S. Pat. No. 4,751,795 filed in the name of Walter F. Jenne entitled "IMPROVED KNIFE SHARPENER", a knife sharpening tool is disclosed that has a generally planar, elongated plastic handle or frame that permits the sharpener to be supported and used in a variety of effective positions with the user's hand well out of the way of the knife sharpening area and with relatively light manual pressure. The frame is arcuate in configuration and is bifurcated at one end defining a pair of support posts in which crossed knurled, hardened steel rods are insert molded. The bifurcated handle or frame posts define converging surfaces extending away from the rods that form a line-of-site for the user when sharpening a blade between the two rods.
These support posts also have aligned transverse projecting surfaces that are adapted to engage the side edges of a table or the like when the frame is supported on top of the table with the rods projecting over its edge. These surfaces align the rods so that a line bisecting the rods is perpendicular to the table edge permitting the user to have an accurate feel as to blade orientation with respect to the rods.
With this improved knife sharpener and in part due to the some six inch arcuate length of the sharpener and its planar configuration, the frame may be supported on top of a table or another rigid horizontal surface with the rods extending over the edge of the surface and the knife sharpened with only very light downward hand pressure on the handle.
While this knife sharpener has been found very suitable for sharpening, its knurled, hardened steel rods are quite abrasive and not suitable for honing previously sharpened knives. Attempts at replacing the knurled rods with rods roughened by sand blasting have not been particularly successful because rods roughened by conventional sand blasting techniques do not provide sufficient honing characteristics.
It is a primary object of the present invention to provide an abrading tool for honing and even sharpening that ameliorates the problems noted above.